The best way to avoid getting a cold or the flu is to boost your body's immune system. Here are some tips for guarding your health.

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Steps

1

Get plenty of restful sleep. Your body recharges itself at night. Inadequate sleep patterns have been linked to high blood pressure and obesity.

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2

Drink at least 8 glasses of water every day. Staying hydrated is essential to your health. Water helps your body assimilate nutrients and convert food into energy. Water also helps flush out impurities of your body.

Eat a healthy, balanced diet. Include protein to protect and build your lean muscle mass and plenty of healthy carbohydrates from fresh fruits and vegetables. A healthy body starts on the inside with proper nutrition.

6

Take a high quality vitamin and mineral supplement daily. Most of us don't eat all the fresh fruits and vegetables we need for optimal nutrition. Today, foods come from farther away than the local farmer's field and lose nutritional value during transport and processing. So take a daily multivitamin to bridge the nutrition gap.

7

Wash your hands frequently or use a liquid hand sanitizer. It's easy to pick up germs from door handles, grocery shopping carts and other articles used by large numbers of people.

8

Protect your eyes. The eyes easily absorb viral particles, if someone with a cold/flu sneezes in your face, more likely than not you will come down with the disease. Wearing of glasses (prescription or sun glasses) greatly reduces this occurrence. Or simply close/squint your eyes when on crowded locations during colds/flu season to minimize the surface area.

9

Reduce Stress and Think Positively. Your mental state has more of an impact on your body's immune system than many people realize. Mental states such as pessimism or depression directly effects the hormones released into our bodies. These chemicals (eg. cortisol) also directly depresses the immune system. Being optimistic, happy with life and generally easy going is part of being healthy.

10

The other most important thing is to make sure that the people around you don't catch a cold; so keep them healthy too, for example if they sneeze, or is around someone who is sick, make sure that you give them some sanitizer, or make sure they clean their hands.

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Warnings

Drinking too much water could upset your balance of salt and electrolytes. Don't force yourself to drink way more than you normally would, or should.

If you do catch a cold, try to avoid most medications. Cold and flu medicine can help you feel better by relieving your symptoms, but studies show that they actually prolong the time you'll be sick. Beef up your water, get plenty of rest and let your body's natural healing ability go to work.